GetReligion
Saturday, April 05, 2025

George Conger

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Teen sex and pregnancy in UK: The Daily Mail and The Times abstain from discussing religion

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“If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it,” argued Ronald Reagan.

A study released last month in Britain reports this maxim is true not only of economics, but sex.

The Daily Mail, The Times and other outlets report that claims that cutting government spending on sexual education would lead to a rise in teen pregnancy have been shown to be untrue.

Researchers actually discovered the obverse: cutting sex-ed spending leads to a decline in the rate of teen pregnancies. The question GetReligion readers will want answered, of course, is this: Might there be a religious or moral angle to this news story?

The lede in the May 30, 2017, story in The Times entitled “Teenage pregnancies decline as funding for sex education is cut” states:

Teenage pregnancy rates have been reduced because of government cuts to spending on sex education and birth control for young women, according to a study that challenges conventional wisdom. The state’s efforts to teach adolescents about sex and make access to contraceptives easier may have encouraged risky behavior rather than curbed it, the research suggests.

The Times story is behind their paywall, but the Daily Mail’s version, entitled “Sex education classes DON'T help to curb teenage pregnancy rates and may encourage youngsters to have unprotected intercourse” lays out the same story.


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Tsar Ludicrous: Daily Mail & The Australian come up short when covering Putin, religion

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Russia is mysterious. Russia is sententious. Russia is ludicrous.

The recent spate of articles purporting to see the fell hand of Moscow behind the recent American presidential campaign has brought this traditional construct back into the headlines.

To avoid igniting partisan passions – and alienating half of my audience before the story gets moving – I won’t be looking at any of the Donald Trump pieces, but a series of stories on “Tsar” Vladimir Putin.

Reports that some Russians are calling for the restoration of the monarchy and the crowning of strongman Vladimir Putin as Tsar are circulating in the press and being built upon the mysterious, sententious, ludicrous triad. This is not new.

In Woody Allen’s 1975 film "Love and Death," Diane Keaton’s Sonja character and Allen’s Boris offered several comic set pieces on the deep soul that lurks within the Russian breast.

Sonja: To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.

The inability to comprehend the workings of the Russian mind is not confined to middlebrow comedy. In his 1993 biography of Nicholas II entitled “The Last Tsar,” historian Edvard Radzinsky struggled to explain the power Rasputin held over the royal family and Russian political life. The outrageous behavior of the “mad monk,” he believed, was a pose. It was a:

“... wholly self conscious attempt to exploit the mystery of the Russian soul for his own ends. Tolstoy plus Dostoevsky, a kind of banal Tolstoevsky – the symbol of the West's perception of Russia.” (p 108)

It is not merely the Romanovs who couldn't seem to get a handle on the mysterious Russian soul. Reporters, politicians and pundits – as well as American college students for whom Tolstoevsky remains Russia’s greatest writer – seem unable to grasp the otherness of Russia’s people, its literature, politics, history and art.


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The Los Angeles Times team acts like it's never seen the Holy Eucharist before

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Does The Los Angeles Times truly not know what Holy Communion is?

A reader of an article entitled “Bishop of Orange signs construction contract for renovation of Christ Cathedral” in the local news section might well wonder.

The decline of the late Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, one of the first mega-churches in the United States with a nationally syndicated worship service, has been discussed at GetReligion over the years. As has the subsequent purchase of the landmark property by the Roman Catholic Church for repurposing as its new cathedral.

The article in the May 26 print edition reports the first phase of reconstruction has been completed.

More than 10,000 panes of the cathedral’s mirrored glass already have been re-caulked and resurfaced, under budget and on schedule, Rev. Christopher Smith, rector and episcopal vicar, told guests at the signing ceremony.

So far so good.

However, the reporter’s lack of knowledge of the subject soon overtakes the story.

The contract signing is timely, as the Catholic Church has feast days ahead, Vann said, noting Pentecostal Sunday on June 4 – often called the birth of the church – and the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul, who built the great basilicas in Europe, on June 29.

Perhaps “Pentecostal Sunday” was a spell-checker error, where the thought that passed from the reporter’s brain to her fingers to the page was intercepted by word processing software – correcting Pentecost to Pentecostal.


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Must reporters take a man at his word? UK paper caught in a 'Quaker' conundrum

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“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master -- that's all.”

– From "Through the Looking Glass," by Lewis Carroll

A story in a local newspaper in the U.K. caught my eye this week, raising questions on the nature of truth and the craft of journalism.

The news that the Rev. Philip Young was standing for election to Parliament in the forthcoming General Election is of interest to the retired vicar’s family and friends – and the electors of Suffolk no doubt. But I expect little notice to be taken of the news.

What I found of interest, from a professional journalist’s perspective, is the descriptors the subject of the story used in talking about himself. Young is identified as a retired clergyman of the Church of England – but also as a Quaker and a Franciscan.

Young’s claim raises the philosophical question for journalists: to what extent may a person identify themselves? What shapes reality? Is it the social construction given by the subject of a story, or an outside arbiter – an eternal truth, natural law, the Associated Press Stylebook? Which, to borrow from Humpty Dumpty, is to be master?

This issue arises on questions of gender these days. Is it Bruce or Caitlyn Jenner?


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The Eucharist -- Made In France

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Easter is one of the silly seasons for the media. The holiday sees a spike in publication of religion-themed stories in the secular press – often with uneven results.

Some outlets opine on topics for which they are manifestly unqualified to offer an opinion. Donald Trump's “Two” Corinthians controversy and the New York Times' inability to explain Easter are two recent examples noted by GetReligion.

The season also sees the production of prestige stories seeking to sum up the meaning of life in 2000 words or less. Time magazine has a long tradition, which began long before its “Is God Dead” 1966 cover story, of investing in these middlebrow faith stories.

A third seasonal trope is the religion item tied to events in the secular world. These present the opportunity for the writer to demonstrate his cleverness. One that caught my eye over Easter reported on calls for protecting French domestic industry from unfair competition.

The story in the French opinion magazine, Boulevard Voltaire, entitled “Les monastères français en péril: la Pologne et les USA « cassent » le marché des hosties” tied President Trump’s sabre-rattling over allegations that Canada is dumping lumber and dairy products in the United States with news that French nuns were protesting the importation of cheap Eucharistic hosts from the USA and Poland, undercutting domestic industry.

Let me set the scene. The European press loves Donald Trump, but not in the way it loved Barack Obama.


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Satanic ritual abuse back in the news, only now these claims are being met with skepticism

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Satanic ritual abuse is back in the news, but this time around the press is doing a much better job in reporting on allegations that secret covens of satanists are abusing and murdering children in America and Britain.

Beginning with the McMartin preschool case in 1984, when KABC trumpeted the news that the operators of a Manhattan Beach nursery school had ritually abused several dozen children, much of the media accepted without question fantastic claims brought by police, parents and prosecutors. But by the early 1990s when the the courts began tossing out convictions based on recovered memories, coached testimony and magical thinking, the media backed away.

In 1991 David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles examining the media’s coverage of the McMartin preschool trial, finding his own newspaper had failed in its duty to provide balanced, honest coverage.

In its analysis of the McMartin case, the New York Times wrote:

The verdict has produced a self-examination by the media, most notably a four-part series in The Los Angeles Times in which David Shaw, who covers the news media for the newspaper, asserted that his own newspaper consistently favored the prosecution and failed to give critical scrutiny to its charge.

Academic and government studies have subsequently found no truth in claims of organized groups abusing children for satanic ritual purposes. Some abusers have used these motifs to frighten their victims, but in the U.S. and Britain there is no such thing as ritual satanic abuse (SRA).

I qualify my statement by saying "the U.S. and Britain," in that religiously motivated ritual abuse does exist in Africa. Police have investigated incidents in the West of suspected ritual abuse committed by recent immigrants who may have brought their customs with them.

Two current stories in the U.S. and British press have resurrected SRA: the Pizzagate story from the 2016 presidential election campaign and abuse claims lodged against deceased British Prime Minister Edward Heath.


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The solid story that could have been: The New York Times and the Atonement

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Critical thinking is the mantra of a modern humanist education. For the chattering classes, to use Matthew Arnold’s phrase, there is no higher intellectual virtue than empathy, of understanding diverse points of view, and thinking critically about one’s own beliefs.

When this ideal is met, education truly takes place. The mind – the soul – is broadened. But as any observer of what passes for intellectual life knows, critical thinking, as practiced by the media and academic elites, goes one way.

Recognition of cultural difference is always good, in this world view, while stereotypes are always bad. Yet few seem to be able to make the connection that stereotypes, whether good or bad, are in fact descriptions of cultural difference. The moment a writer generalizes about a culture’s or people’s distinctive qualities they are constructing a stereotype.

If pushed to explain this contradiction, the response of the modern mind is that the problem is not all stereotypes but negative stereotypes – which means stereotypes of anyone other than white men, Evangelicals, Catholics or Americans.

In an otherwise commendable article on an abuse story from England, the New York Times offers stereotypical stock characters. While the facts are there in the story, the call to empathy, understanding diverse points of view and thinking critically about one’s own beliefs is noticeably absent.

Here’s a news flash for the New York Times: evil exists and can be found in all times, places, peoples and cultures (not just in white, upper middle class men educated at private schools and professing an evangelical Christian faith.)

Let's roll out some stereotypes.


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Portrait of a lady: Concerning missing art treasures and a contested cathedral

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“Cognitive dissonance” is a mellifluous phrase I’ve heard bandied about in the media during these first days of the Donald Trump administration.

The new president’s supporters are in the grips of this psychological malady, the Daily Kos tells us. In an interview broadcast by MSNBC “Bill Nye” the “science guy” postulated the president also suffered from “cognitive dissonance,” and as he had a “worldview that disagrees with what you observe.”

Writing in 1962 in Scientific American about this new psychological theory, (cognitive dissonance, not Donald Trump), Leon Festinger offered this explanation:

This theory centers around the idea that if a person knows various things that are not psychologically consistent with one another, he will, in a variety of ways, try to make them more consistent. Two items of information that psychologically do not fit together are said to be in a dissonant relation to each other. The items of information may be about behavior, feelings, opinions, things in the environment and so on. The word "cognitive" simply emphasizes that the theory deals with relations among items of information.

Such ideas are not new. Scripture tells us: A double minded man is unstable in all his ways (James 1:8). Once upon a time, a double minded man was one with a character flaw. Now he has a pathological condition.

If the president and his supporters are not sick, they must be evil, the pundits tell us – witness the contretemps over “alternative facts” and Kellyanne Conway. Moral opprobrium like burning coals has been heaped onto the head of the presidential counselor in disputes over alternative narratives of reality.

Stepping back into the GetReligion harness has resulted in a bout or two of cognitive dissonance for me – the neural pathways used in my work as a country priest are not those of a journalism critic.

Nor did I keep all my bookmarks on the web. Looking for interesting items has led me to some odd corners, and the odd corners have unearthed odd stories.

I learned just the other day of a gallery opening in Minsk. The Belarusian Telegraphic Agency reports:


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Wall Street Journal resists news media entropy, finds faith in the 'Sooner State'

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Almost three years have passed since I took pen to paper in aid of the work of The Media Project and GetReligion. I welcome the opportunity to return to the team of writers led by tmatt who cover the coverage of religion reporting in the secular press.

Much has changed in my life these past few years. I have left the Church of England Newspaper after 18 years and have been engaged in the parish ministry in rural Florida as rector of Shepherd of the Hills Episcopal Church in Lecanto. I’ve gone up a notch in the church world and now can claim the right to wear purple buttons on my cassock following my election as dean of Northwest Central Florida. I remain active with two online media ventures, Anglican.Ink and Anglican Unscripted.

The media world has not stood still either. The decline in professional standards – clarity of language, honesty in reporting, balance and integrity in sourcing – continues. From my perspective, it would appear that we in the media are all doomed.

Rudolf Clausius’ 1865 maxim: "The energy of the universe is constant; the entropy of the universe tends to a maximum" – from which he formulated the second law of thermodynamics– is true for journalism as well as physics. In terms of journalism basics, a race to the bottom is underway.

We are now at a point where The Sun, a British redtop or tabloid, is a better source for religion reporting than The Independent (one of Britain’s national papers). Compare these reports on a Catholic abuse scandal in Italy published earlier this month.

The Sun’s story is entitled: “ROMPING IN THE PEWS: Randy Italian priest ‘with 30 lovers’ faces the sack for ‘organising wild S&M orgies on church property’.” The Independent’s piece has the less colorful headline: “Italian priest faces defrocking for ‘organising orgies on church property’.”

Naughty vicar stories are a staple of the British press.


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